Monday, March 16, 2009

Parent Letter: Went on Retreat

I didn't get to email you yesterday so I am sending you a Dear Elder letter. I had a nice weekend. I left for the retreat Friday late afternoon and got there around 5:30. We signed in. We were told that the gate would close at 10pm but we figured we could go out to eat and be back long before that time. You guessed it. Sitting at Cracker Barrel about 15 miles from the campground we realized it was 9:50. So we sat and talked for another hour or so, then headed back. Parking the car outside the gate, we first tried opening it by jumping up and down on the hidden trip wire. This, of course, did not work, since all of us are so very, very thin. lol. In the cloudy darkness, we walked the 2 miles to the cabins without a flashlight. Although I just realized that I DID have a flashlight in my glove box. Oops. Oh well, we made it with no mishaps. The weather was just a bit cold for me in my shorts and platform flipflops.

I would have easily paid three times the money I did for this retreat. One of the women, Marilyn, presented a workshop on personal mission statements which was part therapy and it was extremely transformational. We worked closely with each other on some of our issues and we all learned a lot. Despite the fact that I find it very difficult to write a personal mission statement, I did manage to come up with one in the end, after we had each filled up half a notebook with our thoughts. We enjoyed working with a set of 100 Value cards developed by the Bahai that puts the YW values to shame. We were so into this workshop that it went on and 0n and ON throughout Saturday. I am going to buy the Value cards she had. They were really cool.

That evening, Claire led a presentation on The Chosen, which we had all read ahead of time. It is by Chaim Potok, have you read it? It is about 2 Jewish boys and their struggles with their religion. We talked about religion and coming of age. It was very interesting.

At 2 am we thought about doing yoga, but put it off until next year's meeting! It was supposed to be part of our program, but we just didn't get to it.

Sunday we held a worship service led by Yours Truly, which included thoughts and singing by everyone, and was patterned on the workshop given by RLDS Apostle Susan Skoor at the last Sunstone, on the different styles of spirituality.

Anyway, it was a fun time for me, even though the whole weekend we had cold weather and rain. We didn't ever get to go canoeing on the lake, which I was looking forward to. But everything was really fantastic.